Tips to save energy at your office

Most Popular

Most Recent

Ideas and inspiration from this year’s Innovation in Sustainability Awards

This year the Portland Business Journal recognized 14 Portland organizations for their innovations in sustainability. The year’s award winners may seem leaps and bounds ahead of the norm, but in most cases, their trajectory started with many small steps.

Here are highlights of this year’s winners, along with some on-the-ground actions you can take, inspired by their work.

OMSI also created a new long-term exhibit — Clever Together/Juntos somos ingeniosos — a bilingual exhibit helping visitors understand how sustainability can be integrated into their day-to-day choices.

What you can do:

Visit OMSI’s Clever Together/Juntos somos ingeniosos exhibit — or plan a lunch time work field trip – to learn sustainability actions you can take at home or work.

Set up a “Bin of Confusion” for a week — tell people to put items in that they don’t know what to do with. Then contact us, or call Metro’s recycling hotline staff (503-234-3000) — they’ll tell you if, where, and how that item can be re-used or recycled.

OEC develops and promotes solutions to Oregon’s environmental challenges through their work with individuals around sustainable living, businesses around sustainable practices, and elected officials around policy. Their current focus areas are clean water, toxic-free environments, and climate protection.

What you can do:

Sign up for their newsletter to stay informed (sign up is at the bottom of this page)

Hatch is a community innovation lab, providing education, office space and access to capital for social entrepreneurs. Springboard Innovation, the nonprofit that created Hatch, will soon become Hatch Innovation, with subsidiaries Hatch Lab, Hatch Purpose, and Hatch Capital.

Or sign up for their newsletter to stay informed as they develop new offerings.

Green Building

Reuse is where it’s at! This year’s green building award winners all focused on repurposing and renovating rather than building from the ground up.

Venerable Properties has a long history of restoring old buildings, and has always focused on salvaging existing building components, rather than sending them to the landfill in favor of new replacements.

SERA Architects’ major renovation of downtown’s Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt building is a great example of the company’s integration of sustainability with the design process.

Redside CRE is a real estate investment firm that focuses on revamping older buildings for efficiency and sustainability, rather than new development.

What you can do:

Look for creative ways to reuse or recycle in your workplace.

Identify your workplace’s hard-to-recycle items

Call Metro’s recycling hotline staff (503-234-3000) — they’ll tell you if, where, and how that item can be reused or recycled.